This invention relates to image compressing.
Multimedia programs and games often display animation on a computer screen by the use of transparent bitmaps or “sprites”. Each sprite may include regions each exhibiting its own color. Like animation cells in cartoon animation, a series of sprites is overlaid on a background to create the illusion of motion. Most computer animation titles start with an artist drawing black and white line drawings on paper, scanning them into a computer, and then colorizing the image.
MultiMedia animation sequences can be made up of many different sprites, some moving more than others, with as many as one-hundred or more bitmaps being displayed per second. A typical Windows MultiMedia bitmap takes one byte per pixel, so that a 640×480 pixel screen takes 300,000 bytes. A sprite that measures 100×100 pixels takes 10,000 bytes ( 1/30th of the screen size).
Sprites are stored, along with the computer animation program, on a hard disk drive or CD-ROM. Because sprites occupy a large amount of disk space, a customer's hard disk drive could be filled by a single multimedia title. In a CD-ROM drive, which is slower than a hard disk drive, it is difficult to pull the large sprites from the CD-ROM drive quickly enough to create a convincing illusion of motion.
Sometimes the sprites are compressed for storage and decompressed for display on the screen. Compression ratios of 2:1 have been achieved for complex multi-color images. Higher compression ratios are possible using sprites having only simple solid color patterns, or slower decompression algorithms, or lossy compression.
Some titles such as “Freddie Fish and the Missing Kelp Seeds” use simple coloring schemes. Titles built from Macromedia's Director tool, such as “Barbie and Her Magical House”, slow down the animation rate and use transitions rather than animation. Broderbund's Living Books titles use small sprites and animate only one object at a time.
Some game systems, such as Nintendo or Sega, store a few generic sprites, and re-use them as much as possible. For example, to make Mario run, “Mario Brothers” needs just three or four sprites showing Mario in different stages of running. A whole title can be built out of about a hundred sprites.
Most DOS-based titles use 320×200 resolution. For example, “DOOM” uses the 320×200 mode and small sprites (maybe 20×20 pixels) that are scaled up in size. “7th Guest” crops off the top and bottom of the screen for a “letterbox” style format that is about 600×200.